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Jul 16, 2025
Dr Ryan Baidya

Partnering with the Machine: Why AI Isn’t Just the Future—it’s the Present

There’s a story that every student, professional, and aspiring leader needs to understand: AI is no longer some futuristic marvel sitting on the distant horizon. It’s not an academic concept or a tool to merely "help humans." It has evolved into something much more profound: a full-scale competitor to human professions. But here’s the catch: every time humans have faced such powerful tools throughout history, we’ve done the same thing: we partnered with them. The steam engine, the computer, the internet—each began as a disruption and evolved into collaboration. The same must happen now. Let’s explore one striking example that’s grabbing headlines: The Unseen Colleague: AI is No Longer Just Tech, But a Transformative Partner in Human Professions The conversation around Artificial Intelligence has shifted dramatically. No longer merely an impressive technological marvel, AI has emerged as a robust competitor in numerous human professions, pushing individuals and industries to redefine their relationship with technology. The stark reality is exemplified by the recent move at Goldman Sachs, a bellwether for the financial sector, which signals a profound change: the bank is onboarding an AI-powered software engineer named Devin to its tech team. Goldman Sachs' New Hire: Devin, the AI Engineer This isn't just about efficiency; it's about a fundamental re-evaluation of workforce needs. Goldman Sachs has embraced Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer developed by Cognition, to perform end-to-end coding tasks. From reading documentation and writing code to debugging, testing, and reporting results, Devin is designed to operate at a human level. The key takeaway for businesses, however, is the economic advantage: Devin comes at a fraction of the cost, requiring no six-figure salary, benefits, or vacation days. Goldman's Chief Information Officer, Marco Argenti, envisions deploying hundreds, potentially thousands, of these AI coders. The aim is to boost productivity by an estimated three to four times, particularly for routine and often tedious tasks like updating legacy code. This strategic integration highlights Goldman's deep push to embed AI into its internal operations, seeking both efficiency gains and significant reductions in personnel costs. The Broader Implications: A Shifting Professional Landscape Goldman Sachs' move is a potent signal for the broader financial sector and beyond. AI's capabilities are rapidly transforming core business functions, from compliance and customer interaction to risk modelling, fraud prevention, and sophisticated investment strategies. Reports suggest that as many as 200,000 banking jobs could be impacted by AI adoption over the next few years. This isn't necessarily about wholesale replacement, but a redefinition of roles. Traditional responsibilities like crunching numbers or compiling reports are increasingly being automated. Instead, human professionals are finding their roles evolving to interpreting AI outputs, validating machine-generated insights, and exercising critical judgment to override AI models when necessary. New roles are emerging, such as model risk officers, conversational system trainers, and compliance leads specialising in prompt engineering. Other major financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and BNP Paribas are also deep into their AI integration journeys, albeit at varying paces. So What Should Humans Do? Let’s be honest: resisting AI or denying its capabilities is futile—and unwise. The smarter choice is to do what we’ve always done: adapt and partner. Just as early humans learned to use fire rather than fear it, the modern professional must learn to work with AI, not against it. That means: Developing complementary skills like critical thinking, design, emotional intelligence, and leadership. Understanding AI tools so you can guide, refine, and manage their outputs. Innovating at the human-AI boundary, where creativity, ethics, and intuition still thrive. The Imperative of Partnership: Humans and AI, Hand in Hand At this juncture, the most effective strategy for humans is not to fight AI, but to partner with it. The future of work, as envisioned by Goldman Sachs and other forward-thinking organisations, is a "hybrid workforce" where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly. For professionals, this means a shift in required skills and focus. The emphasis will move away from repetitive tasks to higher-value activities that leverage uniquely human strengths: Problem Definition & Prompt Engineering: Humans will need to clearly articulate complex problems and translate them into effective prompts for AI, guiding its work. Supervision & Oversight: Critical human oversight will be essential to review AI-generated code, validate insights, and ensure ethical considerations are met. Creative Problem-Solving: AI excels at processing data and identifying patterns, but human creativity, intuition, and nuanced decision-making will remain paramount for complex, unstructured challenges. Strategic Thinking & Relationship Building: Roles requiring high-stakes judgment, architectural design, security considerations, strategic planning, and, crucially, client relationships, will remain firmly in the human domain. Continuous Learning: Professionals must become "AI natives," fluent in managing autonomous agents and continuously adapting their skill sets to evolving technological landscapes. While the initial investment in AI can be substantial, its long-term cost-effectiveness is a major driver of adoption. AI doesn't require salaries, benefits, or breaks, and can operate continuously, scaling on demand. This translates into significant operational savings, even if human oversight remains a critical component. The Machine is Not the Enemy In conclusion, AI isn’t coming for our jobs in some villainous sci-fi invasion—it’s arriving as a powerful co-worker. But like any new colleague, it requires training, understanding, and collaboration. By embracing AI as a powerful partner, focusing on complementary strengths, and cultivating new skills in collaboration and critical oversight, humans can not only remain relevant but thrive in this new era of intelligent automation. Students and professionals who recognise this shift—who choose to ride the wave rather than stand against it—will be the ones to lead the future. Because in the end, the real question isn’t “Will AI replace us?” It’s “Are we ready to evolve alongside it?”

Jul 16, 2025
B S Murthy

New Light on India’s Plight

‘What ails India’ has been the subject matter of the left-lib, right-wing tussle for long, what with the cynics chipping in, in between. However, the right-wing assault on the left-lib ‘Idea of India’, facilitated by Narendra Modi’s nationalist rise in the Indian political firmament, has only increased the intensity of the scrimmage. Be that as it may, this is to throw a new ‘right’ light on India’s ‘left’ plight that has been Bharat’s bane, for a fresh look at it. In Kitab al-Hind, Al-Biruni had stated that “the Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs”, and that was in the 11th century CE. Wasn’t it the current American parallel of yore? But still, by the 20th century, the Sangh Pariwar, in order to make Hindus feel proud of being Hindus all over again, had no option but to come up with the slogan, garv se kaho hum hindu hain. But then, what it was that so adversely affected the Hindu morale that led to the initial decline and the eventual downfall of Bharat, that is India is the subject matter of this exercise. That the Hindus felt what they felt in the 11th century, despite the 1st century evangelical forays into Malabar by St. Thomas and the 8th century Arab conquest of Sind, in a way, is a giveaway of the cause of India’s plight, past and present – the abject ignorance of the Hindus about the exclusivist ethos of the expansionist Christian and Islamic faiths, and their utter disregard for the perils their followers posed to India’s social harmony, political unity and national integrity. However, given their social ethos of religious amity, this sedate Hindu failure of yore, to grasp the divisive credos of the alien faiths, is understandable, though not anymore. Even so, as the sanatana Hindu non-varnas were socially kept away from Bharat’s varna mainstream, the precedence of Buddhism and Jainism that sought to correct this self-negating social code were more of reformist offshoots than rebellious branches of the otherwise all-encompassing sanatana dharma that, lo, holds Charvaka’s atheism too in its Hindu fold! Whatever, given the inadequate growth of these sub-religious trees, as they failed to provide much of a reformist shade to the non-varnas, the practice of their debasement, if not enslavement, persisted in the Hindu social arrangement. Sadly but inevitably, this social wedge became the Achilles heel for the proselytising Christians and Muslims to pierce through the Hindu body politic. Even so, the Muslims needed the might of their sword and the power of patronage and the Christians, the guile of enticement and the guise of charity for their religious headway. However, it is a testimony to the Indian social resilience that together they could only uproot, up to a quarter of its Hindu roots, that too in a millennium. Ironically, though, it is this intellectual complacency that makes the Hindus the ‘once bitten not twice shy’ kind, showing a blind eye to the unabated conversion of their disgruntled sections into these alien faiths to India’s demographic detriment. Just the same, Maryam Jameelah in her book, Islam and Orientalism, lamented that “If the Mughal monarchs had assumed their responsibilities as Muslim rulers and organised intensive tabliq or missionary work, the majority of Indians would have embraced Islam and hence the necessity for partition and all the disasters that followed in its wake, never would have arisen.” If only Jameelah had read Al-Biruni, she could have envisaged the haughty hurdles of the Hindu varnas that the Mughal tabliq had to surmount. Besides, as the unceasing tabliq would have entailed a perpetual jihad, probably, the Sultans stayed put in their palaces annexed with harems in the limited lands that came under their sway. All the same, they spared no effort to pluck the low-hanging Hindu ‘non-varna’ fruits to substantially fill their Islamic religious baskets. Eventually, though, signalling the end to the eight-hundred-year-old partial Muslim rule, Robert Clive planted the British colonial foot in the Battle of Plassey, plotted by Jagat Seth’s avenging ‘financial’ hand at Siraj-ud-Daulah’s insult of him. Nevertheless, the Nehruvian school curriculum, as if to deprive the Hindu kids of the feel-good revenge, made the game-changing event seem an all-Muslim affair with Mir Jaffar as the quisling. Whatever, given the Mughal decline by then, but for this Cliveian twist to the Mughal legacy, it is not inconceivable that the Marathas, Rajputs and the valorous rest would have given a Hindu turn to the Muslim history. Be that as it may, by ending the Muslim influence in India, the British had enabled the Hindus to feel at home in their ancestral land, at long last, that is. But all that turned out to be a false start for them as the British Macaulayzed their educational mechanism to uproot generations of Hindus from their sanatana grassroots to upend their cultural legacy from their collective consciousness. Hence, as if to prove that ‘there’s a price to pay for freedom’, history threw the Hindus out of the frying pan into the fire. That it affected an encore for them is the irony of India’s history! Not just that, the British pauperised Bharat by ruining its industry and degrading its economy, from some 24% of the world’s GDP to around 4% of it, before they had to leave its shores for their own safety. However, it’s another matter, though, that the centuries-long Islamic turbulence had earlier brought down the Indian economy by ten notches or so. Even as the British rule impoverished India, which hurt all, still the Muslims couldn’t care less for their holy book, hath it “Naught is the life of the world save a pastime and a sport. Better far is the abode of the Hereafter for those who keep their duty (to Allah). Have ye then no sense?” Not only that, having barred secular education to their kids for the fear of its intellectual corruption of their irrational belief system, they had confined them to madrasas for further cementing their blind faith in their tiny heads. As the ummah is change-averse, the Muslim conditions apply even now and maybe into the foreseeable future as well. Thus, it’s no wonder that this inimical feature of the Muslim character has become the cornerstone of the electoral strategy of cynical politics – Give Muslims their Islam and be done with them. But then, even as the patriotic fervour began to awaken the Hindu nationalism, the Islamic craving for a Muslim homeland started taking its political shape, both anathemas to the British colonial masters. It was then that the much-wronged Hindus needed a visionary leader to guide them to their rightful place under the sun, but instead they got the silly but wily Gandhi, who sadly fouled it for them, so to speak, for all times to come. However, Muslims found their messiah in Jinnah, who delivered the hoped-for Pakistan to them, so to speak, on the platter of his own ancestors. Surely, Gandhi was erudite enough to know about the Muslim religious obligation to strive for the establishment of an Islamic rule in dar al-harb, which India was, and still is for them. Even then, instead of tackling the ummah on the separatist front, by appeasing the Musalmans in every which way, he naively persisted in his attempts to avert India’s inevitable partition with disastrous consequences. It’s thus, even as he was unequivocal about the Hindu non-violence, he was ambivalent on the Muslim violence, be it Moplah massacres or Swami Shraddhanand’s murder, to cite but two examples. More so, it was Gandhi’s lack of foresight leading up to India’s partition that hurt the Hindus the most, to appreciate which his wooly Hindu-Muslim sadbhavana should be contrasted with Ambedkar’s robust take on the Muslim psyche: “…the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the Muslim ibi bene ibi patria is unthinkable. Wherever there is the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin.” Thus, failing to see the Muslim intent to break India, even after personally witnessing the Direct-Action Day’s virulent violence, he remained adamant against India’s inevitable, even necessary partition, albeit with the population exchange on the respective religious grounds, advocated by Sardar Patel, not to speak of Ambedkar. Just the same, as if he had a premonition of the post-partition calamity in the offing, on April 6, 1947, he lectured that “Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all, we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus, we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives.” If only Gandhi had a knack for realpolitik, seeing the writing on the Muslim-fractured Indian wall, he should have brought about an equitable religious separation in an amicable manner. It would have saved the catastrophic outcomes of the haphazard partition for Hindus as well as Muslims, more so for the former. But yet, he showed no remorse for his foolhardiness in opposing a planned ‘population exchange-based’ partition. Capping all that, his incalculable harm to India lay in the unilateral anointment of Nehru, the most English of them all (in his own words), as its putative Prime Minister by immorally sidelining the Hindu nationalist Patel, chosen by the Congress Party to lead the nascent nation. Not just that, with his fast-unto-death stunt later, he coerced the Indian government into releasing to Pakistan its share of the partition funds that were in the midst of their military engagement! Sadly for India, this anti-national stance of Gandhi on his utopian moral ground turned out to be the proverbial last straw on Godse’s patriotic back. Whatever, sensing a godsend opportunity to grind his political axe in Godse’s senseless act, Nehru cleverly dubbed the murder of a maverick as the martyrdom of the Mahatma. But equally cynically, so as to smooth the way for the Muslim aggrandisement in India, he forged the anti-communal hammer on the anvil of that human tragedy for smothering the resurgent Hindu nationalism. Why, he did proclaim that he was “English by education, Muslim by culture and Hindu by accident.” However, his Muslim affinity, as can be seen from his midnight missive to Padmaja Naidu, wherein he penned his ‘relief’ at the British military action that killed 400 Bihari farmers indulged in a retaliatory Hindu rioting after the Noakhali Muslim carnage, was more cynical than cultural. What is worse, it is an unambiguous giveaway of his anti-Hindu disposition that he was wont to exhibit throughout, albeit in secular garb. Here are a few lines from that ‘insensitive’ letter for all to ponder over: ‘’.. I learnt that the military had fired on a peasant mob in the rural areas some miles from here, and about 400 had been killed. Normally, such a thing would have horrified me. But would you believe it? I was greatly relieved to hear it!” “And so when the news came that they had been stopped at last in one place and that 400 of them had died, I felt that the balance had been very slightly righted.” Oh, bemoan Gandhi for having entrusted the fate of the trusting Hindus to such a cynical person, who was emotionally as well as intellectually anti-Hindu. But then, the crux of India’s plight is that both these crass characters were chasing the mirages of their false images - Gandhi as an apostle of non-violence and Nehru as the messiah of non-alignment – by turning its interests into a desert of despair, whose appearance is seldom appreciated by the wronged Hindus themselves. No less significant is the start of Nehru’s epochal Tryst with Destiny address to the Indian Constituent Assembly – “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially” – that is an intellectual indicator of not only his limited ambition for the independent India but also his lack of belief in the Hindu potential to reclaim its ancient glory. But, lo, as India’s ill-fate would have it, he happened to helm it for the first seventeen years in its making as an independent nation! However, it’s true that he shaped the ‘temples of modern India’ in the form of giant public sector undertakings and ushered in the elite Indian Institutes of Technology, ostensibly to train their pujaris. Nevertheless, as it turned out, these prized pundits invariably sailed to the American shores for ‘bettering themselves’ and, in time, the Nehruvian temples were turned into white elephants by their ‘socialist’ attendants. That’s not all to the litany of the national, social, moral, material, and political ills that have come to plague India, courtesy of his unsavoury legacy, made worse by his daughter Indira and her daughter-in-law Sonia, who lorded over India for long. No denying, there are books and books about India’s plight, but I doubt if any of them pinpoint the root causes of the malady, and what follows is but an attempt to do so. So to say, to enable the Muslims to feel at home in the Hindu India, for reasons better left for researchers to explore in the future, Nehru had ensured that the Hindus had no cause and effect to feel it is their own country, which proved to be its double jeopardy. It’s thus, with its caste-centric Hindus lacking nationalist impulse and its Muslim residuals devoid of any sense of belonging to it (recall Ambedkar’s words) forming its demographic triad, with the ‘neither here nor there’ closet Christians, India has become the habitat of varied interest groups but not a unified nation with a unitary purpose. But still, the historic situation was never beyond redemption, if only the Hindus were made to believe that in essence India belonged to them and them only and so it was their bounden duty to make it great again, morally, spiritually, as well as materially, never mind the non-committal minorities, by and large that is. However, his dynastic successors, not content with engineering the caste divisions to fracture the Hindu mandate, had fostered the captive Muslim vote-bank to willy-nilly put India on the demographic path of future partition. But at long last, as if to give itself a rightful turn to its wrongful history, India had induced its indifferent Hindu electorate to vote out Nehru’s dubious descendants, who have become its nemeses for long, and vote in the nationalist Narendra Modi. Hitting the ground running, Modi had diagnosed India’s true malaise and started curing the same by restoring the Hindu religious virility and infusing Bharat’s cultural pride in the Indian national consciousness. It’s as if, so to speak, overnight, India has regained its lost Hindu josh on its march towards Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat, the veracity of which the Operation Sindoor has validated. By now, it is apparent, more than ever, that the Hindus have come to believe that India is theirs to cherish, nourish, and protect against all odds and in every eventuality. What is more heartening is, the Hindus have come to believe that like the Sindoor, Atmanirbhar too is not a one-off thing, but an ongoing endeavour to usher in the Vikasit Bharat after Modi’s heart. But yet, India has to contend with the nefarious nexus of the intransigent Islamists, obscurantist Muslims and their left-lib cohorts, who leave no stone unturned to impede its progress in every possible way, judicial activism included. So, it is only by defanging this venomous system that Bharat can become vikasit, and hopefully Modi would be able to do that in time so that the present and the future generations of Hindus would be blessed to be able to echo their ancestors’ modified motto, ‘there is no country but theirs, no culture like theirs, no society like theirs, no democracy like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs, no economy like theirs and no military like theirs’. Image provided by the author.